


Into the Void

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/F, Gen, M/M, Navel-Gazing, Phasma didn't get enough guns in that one, STRAIGHT-UP TORTURE, Sequel to Inopportune Moments, horizon-gazing, hot mess alcoholic TIE Fighter pilots, let's give Phasma every gun, unsafe use of an AT-AT
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 13:39:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5745907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phasma can't hide from the future, and Hux is having a hell of a time running from the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rescue

Phasma breathed in, and Phasma breathed out again. She made each motion of her aching ribs last for a ten-count. She kept sending out the distress signal.

After one hundred fifty hours without drinking, she would begin to succumb to dehydration. She had been drifting in this damaged TIE Fighter for thirty-two hours so far.

Phasma breathed in, and Phasma breathed out again.

The thunk of the freighter's tractor beam woke Phasma from her sleep – it had been two hundred twenty-seven hours since she'd strapped into the TIE Fighter and fled into the void.

She wasn't sure who was taking her out of the fighter, who was holding her down to a stretcher. All she could think, over and over again, was _I deserve this._

****

Phasma woke to a bed in a med bay, much like every other bed in every other med bay she'd ever woken up in. She was on some pretty decent painkillers. It was dark. Everything was square and sterile and made of alusteel. A medical droid was going about its business somewhere in the shadows.

For a long time, she just lay there and got used to the feeling of being alive – and apparently, on some kind of First Order ship. They'd taken her armor off. She had a fluids drip in her arm and a feeding tube jammed up her nose. Life had never been better.

“Where am I?” she said once she remembered how to speak.

The medical droid whirred as it came to her side. “You are on the _F.O.S._ _Devastation,_ Captain Phasma,” it said in a cheerful, tinny voice. “It is Thursday--”

“The _Devastation,_ ” Phasma said. She sat up on the cot. “I'm on the _Devastation_?”

As she spoke, the door to the med suite hissed open.

“I know it's not your favorite Star Destroyer,” said Colonel Tarr as he walked inside the med bay. He was still in his flight uniform, gleaming black armor a little slimmer than Phasma's. He was trying for a haughty smirk, but Phasma could tell he was genuinely happy to see her.

“You son of a bitch,” she said, turning to face him as he approached her bedside.

“I towed your fighter in myself,” Tarr replied, sitting down beside her on the cot. “General Medrin was anxious to be gone from this area – Hux and Ren are nowhere to be found.”

Phasma was going to keep her mouth shut about Hux and Ren. Hux and Ren could go fall right into a sun somewhere as far as she was concerned at the moment. “A pity,” she said.

“Mm.” Tarr nodded, frowning at his knees. “But we've preserved one of the First Order's most precious treasures,” he said, suddenly smiling up at her.

Phasma rolled her eyes, looked down at her bare knees. “If Snoke will even still have me,” she muttered.

Tarr's smile faded.

Phasma glared at him. “What?” she said. “We might as well discuss this part now.”

“Which part?” Tarr said. “I don't see--”

“The part where I have to answer to the Supreme Leader because my idiot co-commanders were too busy fucking and bickering to help me run Starkiller Base,” Phasma replied. “And I assume you have yet _more_ bad news for me, seeing as I'm within _three miles_ of Jarim Medrin.”

“I--”

For a moment, Tarr paused, cringing into the space between him and Phasma.

“Medrin has given me twenty-four hours to get off his ship,” he said. “And unless you want to, ah, _rekindle_ your relationship with the--”

“I'll happily light him on fire, thank you,” Phasma replied. She sneered at the floor between her knees. “Where are my clothes?”

“I'm afraid I was being figurative,” Tarr replied, “and the droid ought to have them—ah. Yes, there it goes.”

The irritating little machine was already wheeling off to another dark corner of her room in the med bay. Of course Medrin had given her a room of her own.

Beside her, Tarr stretched his arms and snapped his head from side to side. “So they _were_ fucking, then,” he said.

“I don't know.” Phasma shrugged. “Sure. Maybe. I don't care.”

Tarr snorted. “Because regardless, Captain, _you_ were the one who got fucked in the end.”

Phasma nodded at the floor. “Yep.”

Again, Tarr made a quiet, disgusted noise into the air in front of him. “A boy,” he said. “He was a nervous little--”

“I _don't want to talk_ about it,” Phasma snapped.

“Of course you don't,” Tarr said. “But the rest of the galaxy has _not_ just been rescued from two uninterrupted years of playing schoolmistress for Kylo Ren and Hux the Younger, and--”

“--and the rest of the galaxy can fuck itself,” Phasma replied. “Until Snoke accepts that those two degenerates were _entirely responsible_ for that utter disast--”

“And why would he do a thing like that?” Tarr licked his lips, gave her a thin smile. “If being _strong with the Force_ wasn't enough to qualify Kylo Ren to command a single base, what does that say about Snoke's government?”

Phasma swallowed. Her mind had gone back—not to the endless arguments with Ren, not to Hux's simpering insistence that his troopers were loyal, but to the troop carrier. The troop carrier, and FN-2187, and the panic that came off him like radiation. _He won't be the first,_ she'd kept telling Hux, and she'd been right. She hated being right about shit like this.

“What did you do to Medrin?” she narrowed her eyes at Tarr.

Tarr licked his lips and gazed off at a dark corner of the ceiling. “I didn't _do_ anything,” he said.

“Oh, of course,” Phasma replied. “I'm on a First Order ship. Of _course_ you're having a fucking lovers' quarrel.”

“Come with me,” Tarr said. “Medrin hasn't notified Snoke of your rescue yet, and--”

“You're going to hide me from Snoke in a TIE Fighter battalion?” Phasma tipped her head and blinked at the man beside her.

“Personally, _I_ was of the opinion that a brief stay on Navira IV might be in all of our best interests,” said the blue-eyed man. “Find out if Snoke wants you dead, go on from there.”

Phasma was quiet for a moment. “Navira IV?”

“It's close enough to the conflict that I can get the orders from Medrin and get you a new command of stormtroopers,” said Tarr. “Far enough that you can disappear there if you have to.”

“Disappearing isn't really something I _do_ ,” Phasma replied. “Hey, do I need any of this shit in my arm?”

The medic droid had arrived with her tights. “You may remove your IV drips,” it said. “Although I recommend--”

Phasma winced as she yanked the flexiplast lines out of her arm. “Am I cleared for alcohol?”

“You may eat and drink as normal, Captain Phasma,” the droid replied, “but alcohol is not recommended on the medications your have been administered.”

Slowly, carefully, Phasma pulled the feeding tube from her nose. She shook her head, blinked hard. The droid was bringing her armor back to her in a clinking duffel bag.

“Twenty four hours,” she said. “How far into that are we right now?”

“I'll put it to you this way,” Tarr said, turning to face her as he stood up. “The best way for you to get a drink right now is to hop in my gunner's seat and get the bottle of rum underneath.”

 

 


	2. Just Like Him

“Shit. _Shit!”_

The screaming of the shield alert system clarified exactly what Colonel Tapikk meant by that remark.

“Pick up,” Hux hissed, stabbing the 'connect' icon over and over again. “Pick up, pick up, pick--”

“Brace for impact!”

“Firing ventral—fuck _meeeee!”_ Major Yang clung to her seat. “That was a miss, sir!”

Phasma had been right—of _course_ Phasma had been right. Phasma's tendency to be right all the time was one of many, _many_ reasons Hux wished she were on this careening, smoking piece of garbage with them as they made what could well be their last attempt at landing on a planet friendly to the First Order.

“General, we just lost the Port Thrusters--”

“I can see that!” Hux snapped. “Pick up,” he whispered. “Pick up, pick up, pick--”

His heart froze in his chest as a head and chest appeared in crackling blue on his holoface.

“Identify yourself,” said a female voice as cold and as deep as the void they'd come from.

“It's me!” Hux bluted. “It's Bren!”

“Bren wh--”

“It's your _fucking brother,_ Jena!” Hux shouted at the holoface. “I'm trying to land on your--”

“Who's with you?”

Her face had come into focus now, as square and pale as his own with a galaxy of freckles strewn across her crooked nose. She seemed to be leaning back, no doubt with her clumsy feet resting on her desk.

“I have my—well, they _were_ my bridge staff—dammit, Jena, I need clearance _now!_ We have stolen fighters on our tail and--”

“Yeah, go ahead and get them online.” His sister turned her head to someone, then looked back at him. She raised her eyebrows. “Where's father?”

Hux blinked. “What—get what online?”

Jena's hand had now appeared on the holoface, holding a fork full of steaming noodles.

“Jena, what are you getting on _line?”_ He knew they hadn't parted on good terms. He knew—but he was her brother. Her _brother._

“You ever get a chance to fire a Navaggian HK-89?” his sister asked, tipping her head back and dangling the fork over her face. She opened her mouth wide to engulf the noodles like a sarlacc. “That is a _fun-ass_ anti-aircra--”

“Jena, this isn't _funny!”_

“Where's father?” She licked her lips, stared at him.

“I don't _know_ , Jena!”

“Brace for evasive action!” Yang shouted.

Hux gripped the balance bars above his head. “It's just me!” he pleaded. “You _have_ to give us--”

Jena's eyes rolled back in her head as she let out a sickening peal of laughter. “Holy shit—did you guys hear that?”

“Jena!”

“Yeah, yeah, lock him—I don't fucking know--”

Hux felt his stomach sink down into his pelvis. “No,” he said. “No, Jena, _please--”_

“I mean, stay online, though,” his big sister replied, a grin stretching across her face. “Chances are, I won't get to do this another--”

A torpedo blast almost sent him flying across the shuttle's cabin.

“Jena, _please_ ,” Hux said. He could hear his voice crack. “We have wounded--”

“Boo fuckin' hoo, Bren,” Jena replied, lifting another forkful of noodles above her face. “Do you know how long it's _been_ since I got to play with this--”

“Jena, we have Kylo Ren on board,” Hux blurted, his voice higher and breathier than he'd heard it in years. “And if you are responsible for _his_ death--”

“Wait, _what?”_

 _“_ Kylo Ren!” Hux shouted. “Kylo Ren! Kylo Ren is on this shuttle!”

“Hold on—Simms! Belay that—yeah, suck my dick, okay? Just get the HK offli—my _dick_ , Simms! My. Dick!”

As Jena chuckled at whatever her gunner was saying, Hux pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger as if it could conceal his rapid, heavy breathing.

Jena scooped the rest of her capsule noodles into her mouth with a series of noises that belonged in a Hutt brothel. As she wallowed in Hux's panic, she manipulated her own holoface.

“Kay,” she said.

Hux blinked. “Kay?”

“Yeah.” Jena licked her lips. “You can land.”

As his sister's features flickered and disappeareed, Hux's entire body went a little slack.

“Oh, thank the void,” Tapikk murmured as she initiated the landing sequence.

“I wouldn't thank anything just yet,” Hux said, still gaping wide-eyed at the blank holoface in front of him. “I don't believe you've met Jena.”

 

****

  


Hux and Major Yang carried Kylo Ren between them as they exited the shuttle. Hux's pulse raced as if he were sprinting down the ramp toward his sister and her squad of goons.

She wore a greatcoat of the same issue as his own, although whether it belonged to her was probably up for debate. The rest of her dress was casual – engineer's trousers, lace-up brown boots, a plain shirt, suspenders and a chest holster. Her hair she had in a braid that fell down one shoulder; the sunburn on her nose suggested that hats were still generally not a thing she did.

Her blaster was out. Her thumb was stroking the safety.

“Is this Kylo Ren?” she called as Hux approached. Behind her was a cluster of steel buildings rusting in the coastal humidity. Around them was just enough jungle for Jena Hux to disappear in almost entirely.

“Yes, it's Kylo Ren,” he said. “Can you _please_ put your sidearm away?”

“How do I know you're telling the truth?” Jena's jaw worked as she watched them carry him up to her.

“You'll know when he wakes up,” Hux replied. “Whether I'm here to restrain him is entirely up to you, dear sister.” They halted a couple of feet in front of her. Ren had not gone gently under the drugs that were keeping him well-behaved; he was groaning faintly, his face twitching as Jena looked him up and down.

“I thought he had a mask,” said Jena. “Like Lord Vader.”

“He did,” said Hux. “He's lost it somehow.” He still wouldn't tell him what had become of the mask, what had happened in the oscillator shaft. Somehow, Hux doubted he would ever know the entire story.

“He got fucked up pretty good, didn't he?” Jena was circling them now, shaking her head as though she was profoundly disappointed. “Fucking Wookiees--”

Hux stared at his sister. He didn't remember telling her that it had been Chewbacca's bowcaster that had so badly wounded Ren. “Who told you--”

“Huh?” Jena looked up at him as though somewhat startled. “Oh. It's been two and a half fuckin' weeks, Bren,” she said. “News travels fast.”

Her thumb had returned to a sane, snug position on the handle of her blaster. Her green eyes gleamed as she looked Ren up and down, blinking now and then, frowning as if she—as if she…

“Jena.”

The horror that began in his mind spread through his body as his sister looked up at him, suddenly smiling, suddenly showing her big crooked teeth in a big crooked grin that was just like Ren's, because she was just like him, and she _knew_. She knew about everything.

“Jena--”

“Welcome home, Bren,” his sister said, putting her blaster back in its holster with one hand as she gestured to the rusting compound behind her with the other. “We have a _lot_ of catching up to do, don't we?”

 

  



	3. Rough Landing

“--wait, so they _are_ fighting for the First Order, or--”

“The majority of their leaders have so far been friendly to the First Order,” Tarr explained again to Captain Bordon. “But _friendliness_ is no longer enough for Lord Snoke.”

The Green Eighteenth was occupying a good half of the officers' lounge on board the _Ravager_ , a cruiser barely large enough to accommodate the battalion even after getting its own TIE Fighters out into space for a sudden patrol. This eight-hour fuel stop was Tarr's first chance to brief them on their new mission since he'd pissed off General Medrin, and it was their last chance to gather their wits before what sounded like a long and thankless planetary assignment.

“Now, there are, of course, local governments eager to comply with Snoke's requests,” Tarr continued, swirling his beer around in its bottle. “ _However_ , compliance involves sending shuttles full of money and troops out of the atmosphere, where they have been having an unfortunate tendency to get shot down by less submissive local leaders.”

Phasma hadn't been drunk on duty in twelve years. She was nursing a vodka and syncaf and wondering if it counted as being drunk on duty if your commanders all thought you were dead.

“So we're doing what,” Bordon said. “Escort runs?”

“Basically,” Tarr replied. “And, of course, once we find the guns, we'll need Phasma's Stormtroopers to carry out the ground assault.”

“I thought you were gunning!” Lashak piped in.

“I'm gunning until we hit ground,” Phasma said. “Dossin's running off to get our troops from the _Violator_.” That was supposed to be her job, but she didn't have a long and tumultuous personal history with the _Violator_ 's commander that would save her if Snoke no longer felt she was useful to the First Order.

“Real Stormtroopers, this time,” Tarr added.

Phasma rolled her eyes. “I'm so glad you're so amused by all this,” she said.

“As am I, Captain,” Tarr replied. “It's such a wonderfully comic galaxy we live in, after all.”

  


****

  


Navira IV was a lonesome ball of rock ambling around a small sun in the Western Reaches, mostly occupied by farmers who wanted to be left the hell alone. These planets were easy to deal with if you knew what you were doing, if you were honest with the people who lived there (who were never as noble and independent as they pretended to be).

The Green Eighteenth was slated to land outside a hamlet that had been one of the first to start sending tribute to the First Order. They would begin their operations by escorting tribute vessels off the planet and by escorting Phasma's troops onto it. In theory, it was entirely up to the recalcitrant local warlords to decide how destructive this campaign was going to be.

“Searching for atmospheric settings,” Tarr said as he punched buttons in the pilot's seat.

“Detection systems rolling,” Phasma said.

“Ready for drop.” Tarr got on the battalion channel. “Dropping in five,” he said. “Four, three--”

“Incoming at thirty-six three,” said Captain Gannett. “Delta squadron, getting hot.”

“Son of a bitch,” Tarr sighed. “All squadrons to arms,” he snapped into the battallion channel. “Gannett, report in.”

“We have six TIE Fighters with jammed comm systems incoming,” replied the woman on the commlink. “One enemy TIE Fighter down--”

“Colonel, we have eight to twelve more TIE Fighters approaching from forty-five twenty-three.”

“Presume these craft to be hijacked,” Tarr said. “Gamma Squadron, I need you up and behind – get us a full picture here.”

Phasma's detection systems started to scream. “Enemy craft sighted,” she said. “Locking cannon.”

“Yep!” Tarr giggled quietly into his comm as he got their fighter a little better into position.

Phasma was still feeling their stop in the officers' lounge, but not so much that her shots didn't slide right in where they were supposed to—on this TIE Fighter and the next one, too. At this point, hitting a target was not something that required a lot of thinking with the brain. It was a visceral process that began and ended in the arm holding the trigger.

“It's a small squadron of stolen fighters,” said Captain Rogett of Gamma Squadron. “We're sweeping them right into you.”

Before Rogett had even finished his sentence, Tarr got Phasma in line for another TIE Fighter. As she pumped three bolts into it in quick succession, her sensors told her another one of Tarr's gunners had destroyed two more just out of her weapon's range.

“We have three fighters retreating toward the planet,” Captain Argas said.

“Take your squadron and hunt them down,” Tarr replied. “Gamma Squadron, assist Beta Squadron at the flank--”

“Enemies in range--”

A gunner hollered in delight, and the cheering of two squadrons came loud over the comm connection.

“Did you fuckin' _see that_ , Captain?”

  
“Nice job, sergeant!” Argas said. “Colonel, I think we can land—Argas just grav-drifted our problems out of orbit.”

“Well done!” Tarr replied. "I'll leave it to the ladies of Gava Station to thank you properly here in about an hour."

  


****

  


In truth, it would be several hours before the Green Eighteenth had a chance to collapse in a collection of dirty rooms in a hotel that had been cleared out for their arrival. Phasma had decided to rest her eyes for a moment after taking her helmet off, and thirty minutes later had still not moved from her position on the lumpy mattress.

She was bunking with Tarr, Vasher, and Bordon, at least until her Stormtroopers arrived and she had something to do with herself again. Vasher, realizing that she had a rare opportunity to get the first shot at the hot water, was singing to herself in the lav unit while Tarr drank and Bordon snored with his flight armor piled in a heap beside him.

Part of her felt as if she'd come back home after so many years away. The rest of her was terrified of what that meant.

Had she really missed this? She'd thought she'd hated this aimless existence—passed out in a troop carrier or a seized house, waiting for someone to give them a job to do. Getting bored. Slacking. Killing time doing things they hadn't been assigned to do.

Ren and Hux had at least kept her busy, scrambling to compensate for their inexperience and their petty, time-consuming bickering. And they did, she had to admit, have their uses. There was even potential in Ren, if you looked hard enough in the right lighting.

But maybe, Phasma acknowledged, she wasn't meant to bring out the potential in people. She was meant to command Stormtroopers, who by definition had accepted that they were _not_ people and didn't _have_ potential.

That was why she and Tarr got along, at least—the complete lack of potential to be anything but guns and helmets, and the complete acceptance that this was what the galaxy had given them. They had very different ways of coming to terms with that fact, but here it was, uniting them still after all these years.

“Hey,” Phasma said.

“Yeah?” Tarr shifted in his seat.

“What time is it?”

Tarr shifted again. “Twenty-two hundred,” he said. “Give or take fifteen minutes.”

Phasma shut her eyes again. “Might as well get some sleep,” she said. “If I had twenty credits right now I'd put all of them toward you and I meeting this Lady Jena before too long.”


	4. The Speech (Reprise)

“Since we have some fresh faces in the crowd today,” Jena said with a smile, “I think I'd like to conclude this morning's briefing with a little story.”

They were gathered around her in the commissary below the compound, drinking caf and eating some kind of sticky fried pastry that Hux couldn't get the hang of swallowing. Jena was a few inches shy of Hux's height, but she commanded the attention of every soldier in the room as she strode around in a little circle with her mug clutched in front of her.

“Some of you may have noticed that my brother and I have matching coats,” she said, smiling over at Hux with her eyes gleaming mischief. “Some of you may also have presumed correctly that my brother earned his coat by grovelling at the feet of First Order officers—by doing their bidding and waiting on their every whim, just like our father and mother and their fathers and mothers before them.”

She shook her head, took a small sip of caf. “As many of you already know,” she said, “that is not how I came by this rather attractive piece of clothing.”

A low rumble of laughter came from the throats of Jena's soldiers. Hux's men shifted on their feet, uneasy under so many predatory glances.

“A year and a half ago, the First Order sent one of its generals down here to treat with me, and she came down here and I let her into my home and I sat her down at my table and I _fed her_ like a civilized human being.” Jena raised her eyebrows at the assembled crowd around her. “And this First Order General, she says to me, she says—Jena, Lady Jena, I can see that you take pride in providing your people with stability, and with prosperity, and with liberty under rule of law.”

Jena took another sip of her caf. “She says, Jena, I can see that you understand the necessities of government, and I can see that you understand that the First Order's work does not come without cost.” She frowned. “And that, ladies and gents, is where I had to raise my hand and gently but politely _stop_ this First Order General.”

Another low rumble of uneasy laughter rose from the crowd.

“See, these First Order people, I said, I said they _love_ to come here and talk with me about all the costs they're dealing with.” Jena shook her head slowly, kept walking in that little circle. “They love to talk to me about all the money they're spending on Star Destroyers and battle stations and planetary bases that can wipe out whole systems—yes they do, and they love to talk about all the money I owe them for building all these _technological terrors_ out in deep space where I can't see them or know where all this money is really going.”

She wasn't looking at Hux. She didn't need to look at Hux when she'd just told all of her men to look sidelong at him.

“And what I still find funny,” Jena continued, “is how _cost-effective_ it would have been for this First Order General to get on a commlink to her commanders and give me a rough guess as to what she was trying to get me to pay for and how much of these defense costs my little city was going to be bearing.” She frowned, took a sip of her caf. “It wouldn't have cost her a single credit to show me that information.”

Hux's mind was swarming with all the things that were wrong with this _stupid_ argument and this _stupid_ philosophy, but the room was swarming with people who believed her well past the point of violence.

“But, of course, instead of doing the cost-effective thing, Ladies and Gents, this First Order General did what tradition demanded—and it cost her, Ladies and Gents, it cost her two AT-Ats, twenty-five TIE Fighters, eight hundred ninety-seven Stormtroopers, seventeen First Order Officers...”

She looked around the room, grinning, while her lackeys hung on her every indefensible word.

“...her life,” Jena said, “and her admittedly _very_ sexy greatcoat.”

Jena twirled on her toes, holding her mug above her head in one hand, as her soldiers applauded and cheered for her.

“The First Order,” she continued, raising her voice only a little as she returned her hands to the front of her body, “continues to insist that our planet's leaders bear its costs while it spends recklessly and endlessly on a war it cannot hope to win. As long as they believe they can extort us cheaply, they will try, and their assaults on our soil will not cease until we have pursuaded them in the only language they understand.”

A murmur of agreement swirled around the room. Beside him, Hux felt Colonel Tapikk bristle.

“Loss of life,” Jena said, “loss of equipment, loss of resources— _these_ are the things that the First Order understands. We will send them letters written in the blood of their troopers. We will send them invoices blasted in the sides of their ruined fightercraft. We will balance the ledger of their lives with the fire of our blasters, Ladies and Gents, until their snivelling bureaucrats retreat behind their little desks where we do not have to deal with them a second longer.”

“Treason,” Tapikk muttered beside him.

“Colonel--”

“What was that?”

Jena had paused, her fingers tight on her alusteel caf mug and her eyebrows rising on her face.

“You commit treason,” Tapikk replied.

“Colonel--”

She threw his hand to the side when he moved to put it on her shoulder. “Treason,” she said, her voice shaking as she stepped toward Jena. “Against the First Order and against your own--”

The next word did not make it out of her mouth—but not because Jena had closed her throat. No, Jena decided to throw her thin, frail body back against a wall with only a flick of one hand. A couple of Hux's staff squealed in surprise, looking around the room for the only person they knew to be capable of such a feat.

“Colonel!” Hux felt as if he were breaking himself out of carbonite to sprint to the old woman's side as she fell to the floor.

“Harris, Vela—take this good and loyal officer to an appropriate prison cell,” said Jena. “Along with any other First Order Officers who have not quite gotten the point of this discussion of what things cost on my planet.”

Now, Hux could feel the attention of the room intensify on him. He was helping a groaning Tapikk to her feet as two of Jena's officers came toward them, blasters at the ready.

“What the fuck did I do to deserve this?” she was muttering as she brushed dust from her uniform. “Knock one of these asshole wizards to the ground, another one--”

“Hand her over, General,” said the woman Jena had sent.

“Absolutely not,” Hux replied. “Colonel Tapikk is a longti--”

 _Not this again,_ he thought as his words died in his throat. _Not here--_

She could see everything—and he could feel her take it from him, her mind reaching into his like an icy hand, prying his thoughts from him with long-nailed fingers, one at a time. He heard screaming. He heard his own voice screaming. He could feel that his body was somewhere else, feeling pain somewhere far away.

_Not this again._

  


  


The first coherent thought he had upon waking was that this was not Ren's lap. It did not smell like Ren--

He thrashed, cried out, was restrained by small hands.

“Easy, General,” said Colonel Tapikk. “Easy, now--”

“Where--”

“You're in a cell.”

Ren's voice was like the sudden pull of gravity.

Hux sat up, blinked as he looked around him.

“We're all here,” Ren said. “The woman, your sister—she wants to show us how weak we are.”

He was sitting in a corner—no, crouching, both feet on the ground and his shoulders hunched over his knees. His dark eyes glinted as they scanned the dimly lit room.

“We're all--” Hux saw that he was right. All of his senior staff were crammed into this cell with him. And Kylo Ren. They were all locked in a cell with Kylo Ren.

“Your sister is strong with the Force,” said the pallid creature in the corner. “I can feel it.”

Sharp, bitter laughter erupted from Hux's gut. “So can I, Lord Ren,” he said. “And I suspect--”

He went quiet at the roar of gunfire above them. He heard several officers hold their breaths for a few moments.

“How long has that been going on?” Hux whispered to Tapikk.

“About an hour, Sir,” she said.

“That wasn't—I don't think the briefing covered that,” he said.

“No, sir,” said Tapikk. “I don't think it did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The word you're looking for is Scary Sue and no I don't have a clue in fuck where this is going lmao: the important part is I'm not writing the things I'm supposed to write today 8)))))


	5. Small-Force Harrassment

“This is bad. This is bad.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Phasma grumbled, slugging three bolts of red plasma at the enemy TIE Fighter behind them.

Twenty-three TIE Fighters—where had these people gotten twenty-three TIE Fighters to go with their battalion of X-wings, and why hadn't Tarr been briefed about them?

It was one thing for the Green Eighteenth to be outnumbered by a mixed force. It was an entirely different thing to be ambushed. It was _yet_ an entirely different thing to be fighting on unfamiliar territory.

If they were doing all three at the same time, Phasma really didn't need Colonel Tarr to tell her they were in a bad situation.

“Gamma Squadron, down the ridge,” came a voice over the radio.

“This is Alpha Leader, Gamma Leader,” Tarr said. “Delta Leader, Come In.”

“We're holding steady at the--”

Phasma missed the rest of the exchange-- two more X-wings had come down a ravine.

“We need to lose them!” she yelled.

“We need to get out of here,” Tarr said. “Delta Leader, cover me down that gully.”

He banked left a little sharper than the surviving pilot was ready for.

“This is _not_ small-force harrassment,” he muttered. “This is _not_ \--”

“Shut _up!”_ Phasma snapped. It was more observant than 'this is bad,' yes, but helpful? When had Tarr ever been helpful?

“Hold on.”

Phasma felt the planet's gravity take hold of her guts and twist as Tarr brought them in a wild arcing inversion across a hogback. She spilled fire at a pursuing X-wing, forcing it to cut too close to the rocky hill and lose time recovering its trajectory. The other one fired back, and Tarr jerked them out of its fire line and back again in a graceful little loop.

For an instant, as they came back into their flight path, the X-wing was high enough that Phasma's targeting system could lock onto it. She fired.

The blast of the exploding X-wing threw the other one off-course again; Tarr dove into an offshoot of the canyon before it could recover.

Phasma did not dare smile or even breathe. She watched the sensor display projected in her helmet. She kept her gun hot.

“Delta Leader, this is Alpha Leader,” said Tarr into the comm system. “We're clear—heading down the ridgeline.”

“I see you, Delta Leader,” Captain Bordon replied. “See you at the landing site.”

 

****

  


The Green Eighteenth had touched down in a long, low-altitude meadow along a wide river. They had done their best to conceal their fighters beneath trees while the Resistance patrols—this had to be Resistance—made their way overhead.

They'd only be here for a few hours, if all went well. If all went well, sundown would give them a chance to get back to their base without any further 'small-force harrassment' from this supposed local warlord.

Phasma decided, that since she'd had to listen to 'this is bad' and 'this is not small-force harrassment' from Tarr, Tarr could listen to 'I need my troopers' from her while she paced back and forth in front of him. He took the bait eventually.

“And what are your troopers going to do against a bunch of fucking X-wings?” he said, leaning back against his fighter's generator panel and glaring at her.

“I don't know!” Phasma threw her hands in the air. “If we can get an AT-AT—”

“You think we can get an AT-AT in here?” Tarr said.

“We need to get something more durable than a TIE Fighter into those artillery installments,” said Phasma. “And if it's a steel box full of dead Stormtroopers, then it's gonna be a fucking box full of dead Stormtroopers.”

“I want to know where they got a Navaggian,” said Tarr. “Last woman I knew who owned one of those almost killed me with it, too.”

“You fucking Resistance girls now?” Phasma snapped.

“You can't still think these are Resistance,” Tarr replied. “By every report, Lady Jena's been in bed with the First Order since the beginning--”

“They're all in bed with the First Order,” Phasma said. “Until they get out of bed with the First Order, and turn into Resistance--”

“Phasma,” Tarr sighed.

“What?”  
“Don't be like this,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” She glared at him as she turned to pace in the other direction.

“You know exactly what I'm talking about,” Tarr said. “Just because the First Order is a little much for these people doesn't mean they automatically want to go around worshipping the Jedi and letting the Republic dictate their lives.”

“Are you suggesting hat a bunch of damned anarchists have gotten twenty-three TIE Fighters--”

“I am _suggesting_ that since we have been given poor intelligence, we should go back to our base and come up with a way to get some _good_ intelligence before these orders get all of us killed.” Tarr rolled his eyes. “Although I suppose it's possible you've been going for a dramatic suicide this entire time—and while I certainly empathize with the _urge_ , I rather--”

“We can go wherever you want,” Phasma said, “as long as you stop _talking.”_

“You'll regret saying that,” Tarr replied.

For a few moments, Phasma looked at him with a thin smile on her face. “I know,” she said.

  


****

  


“What do you fucking mean, a week?” Phasma shouted at the holoscreen.

The fighter pilot on the other end shrugged. “An AT-AT is a lot to ask in these circumstances,” he said.

“Well, how long is it going to take _without_ the AT-AT?” She knew the young man was doing his best. It was just—a _week?_

“Five days, Captain,” said the pilot. “You might as well wait for the walker.”

“Fine.” Phasma rolled her eyes. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“You're most welcome. I'll give you an update when we've boarded.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Phasma out.”

She could feel Colonel Tarr's smirk before she turned around to face him, her mouth and brows set in a scowl. “A week,” she said.

“A week,” Tarr replied.

“You'd better have some brilliant fucking ideas for getting us some intelligence in the span of a week,” Phasma said. “Because I've seen the equipment inventory for this town, and—”

“Yes,” Tarr said, “This town is _incredibly_ poorly armed—but while you've been trying to sneak a brace of AT-Ats off a Star Destroyer, I've been in contact with the local militia commanders.”

“Local militia?” Phasma blinked at him. “You saved me from dying in space so I could work with _local militia_ \--”

“No, you need to understand,” Tarr said. “These people are _insane._ ”

A smile overcame his face on the last word that made Phasma's eyebrows shoot up. “Insane?” she said.

“I've set us up a lunch appointment with a Colonel Marion of the People's Guard tomorrow,” Tarr replies. “He swears he can get his regiment's old AT-AT from the rebellion up and running for us if we give him a day or so.”

Now, it was Phasma's turn to smile. “He has an old AT-AT from the rebellion.”

“Well, _he_ doesn't,” Tarr said. “He was very clear to me that he doesn't consider it to be _his_ AT-AT—it's just, he keeps it in his back lot, and--”

“He's going to lend us his old AT-AT from the rebellion,” Phasma said. “What could _possibly_ go wrong?”


	6. Hungry

There was a reason she was doing this.

He'd proposed the system himself—gone through shelves upon shelves of the most advanced psychological research the Old Empire had been able to leave them. It was undeniably effective. The human brain was designed for routine, for companionship, for making predictions that would eventually come true.

The guard's first appearance had set everyone in the cell on edge—hoping, fearing, daring to stand and crane their necks so they could see what he was doing as he checked a panel, muttered something about fucking Kalla and her fucking kids, and left.

Everyone, that is, except Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren remained crouched in his cell, eyes blank and unseeing, face calm and still. Kylo Ren wasn't a part of this exercise.

The officers did not know what time the guard made his first appearance, or his second appearance, or any of his appearances after that. Jena's guards had been sure to confiscate every datapad, commpod, and timepiece Hux's officers had in their possession. They had nothing to write with, nothing to read. They were alone, in the darkness, with only their minds.

And minds eventually failed.

He'd designed the system himself. He knew how to cope with the stress, how to assign regular patrols of the cell's perimeter to help his men keep track of the hours that passed in the darkness. He'd spent weeks—weeks that turned into months, that had to have turned into most of a year by the time he was done—lost among the holorecords, compiling guides and anti-guides, techniques for imposition and techniques for resistance.

He knew why the guards came at random intervals, why they seemed to ignore the prisoners they pretended they hadn't been sent to check on. He knew why they'd be friendly, then unfriendly, then friendly, then flat-out hostile, then friendly, than violently angry at Mitaka, then friendly again. They all knew why they did this. They'd all studied the very same protocol.

He knew she'd drugged the food they'd sent. They all knew she'd drugged the food they'd sent. They'd all studied the very same protocol. Their first priority was to remain consciousness. If they ate the food, they would likely lose consciousness.

He couldn't help it. He couldn't help that people became hungry. He could guard the rations, scowling at his officers as they circled like wild beasts. He could stand up tall and square-shouldered and stronger, stronger than any of them. He could keep this up for days. He could keep this up forever.

And still, Kylo Ren crouched in his corner.

Mitaka had escaped Ren's first purge of the bridge. He was a slim young man to start with, and the trials of the past hours had not made him more imposing. But he had a calculating gaze, and he spoke to the others in the darkness.

He couldn't stop them from getting hungry.

“Look, sir,” Mitaka was saying. How many hours had it been? There had finally been a disagreement – someone had lost count, and there had been a fight, and Yang had been physically removed from Captain Danir.

“Look, sir—it does not _matter_ what continued stress Lady Jena puts us under--”

She was their squad commander for the duration of the mission – tall for her age and beginning to grow into her awkward features, strutting around in her Lieutenant's uniform with the heel of her hand caressing her blaster's hilt.

“It does not _matter_ ,” Mitaka was saying, “what continued stress Lady Jena puts us under, sir, if we die of starvation.”

“That's a fallacy,” Hux explained. “We'll lose consciousness from dehydration long before we reach the point of--”

It was just a simulation. She was just showing off.

He was suddenly back on the _Finalizer_ , a flexiplast mouthguard between his teeth. Colonel Tarr was there, Colonel's thick, beautiful arm was launching his fist into his face.

He couldn't help them getting hungry.

  


****

  


When he awoke, Kylo Ren was still crouching in his corner – this time with a new bruise blooming purple on his right eye. He was watching Hux now with those dark, glittering eyes, not simply staring into space. He held a bottle of red liquid in one hand.

“I need you to drink this,” he said, rolling it slowly toward Hux.

He was lying on a mat, his head on a pillow. His cheek had grown a day or two worth of stubble.

“What is it?” he said, picking it up. It was red-flavored, whatever it was, and Hux emptied half the bottle before his stomach panicked on him.

“You need to drink slowly.”

Hux was on his knees, fingers splayed, hands covered in red-flavored carb replacer. “Mother _fuck!”_ he groaned at the duracrete beneath him.

Ren was beside him now, helping him to his feet, trying to get him to stand, failing. They had all failed? “Get her,” he said.

Hux couldn't hear exactly what the other man said in reply. He felt his chin loll to his chest – they had drugged it? They had drugged everything.

“Get Jena _now,”_ Ren growled.

“I couldn't help it,” Hux said, he knew not to whom. “I couldn't help--”

“Quiet,” Ren snapped.

And quiet was what he got. A full memory was coming back to him now – darkness, fists and hands and so many eyes, cruel and hateful and _hungry_ , you couldn't do anything to stop people from getting hungry. They always got hungry.

  


****

  


“So let me get this straight.”

Jena had at least waited a few minutes for him to open his eyes and look around the med bay for a minute or so. It was more of a repair shed than a proper med bay – walls of rusted alusteel, a plant in one corner where diseases no doubt bred happily. Though the equipment on the other end of his IV drips looked refreshingly modern, his bedframe creaked when he moved and the sheets had been worn thin.

“You decide that you're gonna build yourself a little Death Star for the First Order,” said Jena, making a circle around Hux's exhausted figure. “And so you do, and you destroy an _entire system_ on behalf of the First--”

“I didn't want the whole system to go,” Hux interjected. “Snoke insisted--”

“Snoke is a shrinking coward who ought to command a base himself if he wants to accomplish such grand feats,” said Jena. “If he wants to bring back this Tarkin-era showboating--”

“Starkiller Base would have won us the Galaxy,” Hux snapped.

“But it didn't,” Jena said. “Just like the Death Star II didn't, and the Death Star before that--”

“Did you really bring me here to have a history lesson?”  
“I didn't bring you here at all,” said Jena. “I wanted to watch you get torn into little tiny pieces by the stupid assholes you brought to my planet, and I wanted to see how long it was gonna take for them to decide that _you_ hadn't been drugged, so--”

“I see you've kept your love of theater,” Hux replied. “Who brought me here, if you didn't?”

“Kylo Ren stepped in on your behalf,” Jena said. She stopped at his feet, crossed her arms and tilted her head. Her eyes were tiny slits and her mouth was a thin line. “He let them all eat their rat poison and die begging for water, clawing at their faces, and I think he _really_ liked watching a couple of them go out.”

She was lying about this – she was absolutely lying about this. It was in the manual he'd written.

“Yes?” Hux blinked. “The man has a sense of duty after all, it seems. Good for him.”

“Yeah, good for him.” Jena grinned. “Bren, do you know what Kylo Ren's problem is?”

“Kylo Ren has a lot of problems,” Hux replied.

“Kylo Ren's problem, Bren, is that nobody is allowed to be smarter than Kylo Ren, because bad things _happen_ to him when people are smarter than him.” She bit her lip, heaved a sigh as she looked off to the side. “And so, he's convinced himself he's the smartest person in the galaxy – which is a shame, Bren, because the kid has a _shit_ ton of talent and he could really do some great things with it if he applied himself a little.”

“If people like you would stop funding the Resistance, Jena, he already would have _done_ some great--”

“Sssshhh,” Jena said, stepping closer to him. “Your ribs are still healing from when your men kicked the shit out of you in that cell back there.”

“They were hungry!” Hux snapped. “You can't help--”

“Bren, honey, I _know_ you can't help people getting hungry.” She was at his side, now, laying a hand on his forehead and smiling sweetly down at him. “That was the point of that whole little exercise, is that there are some things around here that you just do not get a say in anymore.”

“Jena, what are you--”

“I'm going to be teaching you boys some valuable lessons, Bren,” Jena said, pulling a syringe from her arm.

“What the fuck--”

The needle stung his neck as she jabbed it in and pulled it out as fast as a lightning strike, sighing and shaking her head as the sedative pulsed into his blood. “You still have some healing up to do, I think, before we start Ren's training up again.”


	7. He Never Said it was His AT-AT

There was something bizarrely calming about shooting through a jungle on a landspeeder, crouched forward in the seat so you could keep your balance while you dodged the moss-rusted trunks of trees. This jungle was top-heavy, dark, deciduous—it was cooler down here than she'd been expecting.

 

Up ahead of her, Tarr was doing his part to make this trip a lot more fuel-intensive than it needed to be, shifting from side to side to send his speeder gliding along tight serpentines between trees he could have just avoided by going in a straight line. Now and then a near miss would send a jovial whoop from his throat, followed by a hearty cackle Phasma had forgotten she missed.

 

Fifteen years ago, she might have been doing the exact same thing, literally throwing her entire body into a fantastic new adventure simply because she _could_. Fifteen years ago, her mind would have been _here_ , balanced over the speeder seat with her body, completely occupied with the task at hand.

 

Fifteen years ago, she did not have this fog of worry hanging over her every move.

 

She kept playing it over and over in her head, that night. FN-2187, the two fugitives. That smug fucking smirk on FN-2187's face. Her fault. It was her fault, now, that Lord Ren's droid had wound up in the hands of these traitors and terrorists. Her fault that Hux had given her one of his father's little social experiments to command.

 

She knew they would expect her to fight, to take her chances on a blaster bolt to the head. She knew they were relying on her, as she did on them, because their honor was her honor, because that was how it was supposed to _work_ in the Imperial forces, in the First Order's forces. She talked Lord Ren through the terrors and passions that plagued him, did her best to interpret the world of normal people to the poor mad boy. She sat by Hux's side in the few hours of humanity he allowed himself, bore silent witness to his weakness and the doubt that stalked him like a shadow. And in return--

 

And in return, in the end, they would give Phasma nothing. They had caught each other's eyes, and before Phasma could warn them, they fell into each other as weak, scared boys locked up on spaceships together had done for centuries, and they forgot that they still needed Phasma.

 

She could see how you could fall into a man like Kylo Ren. He was a mess, a fascinating, troubled mess that surely appealed to Hux's need to fix things and convert chaos to order. Phasma knew she was susceptible to the twenty-four-hour-shitshow aspect of his personality; he reminded her a little of Tarr, if Tarr had gotten _really_ into death sticks and then decided to take himself really seriously. Surely Hux, with his need to terraform other people's minds the way his psychotic father had claimed he'd done with him, had been drawn by such a monumental a project as taming Kylo Ren.

 

She wasn't so sure what Kylo Ren saw in Hux. His companionship was nice enough, at least for Phasma, but even she could pick up the vague sense that the General was a stifled sob in human form. To have Kylo Ren's gifts—to have everything be so _loud_ for you, all the time—and put yourself in such close proximity to such an intensely unpleasant ball of human misery, seemed to Phasma to be more suffering than sex or love or even oxygen could justify.

 

But, then again, she had once watched Will Tarr go toe-to-toe with a rancor armed with nothing but a pair of machetes and a decent-sized bag of cocaine. On the one hand, it didn't look like any fun whatsoever. On the other hand, it also looked like the most fun any person in the galaxy was capable of having.

 

Phasma was starting to realize that one of her favorite parts of her recent postings with the First Order was a healthy professional distance from “fun” as a general concept.

 

Ahead of her, Tarr slowed his speeder to a halt on the lip of a steep gully. Below him, the jungle opened up into a long clearing where spindly ag droids tended to fields of corn and paddies of rice. In the middle, Phasma could see a small village sheltered from the world by a high, spiked fence.

 

This island of civilization seemed to be mostly occupied by a huge, crowded junkyard. Farm equipment, obsolete droids, bits and pieces of various items of weaponry, all laid out in a grid that was none too neat and organized along no system that Phasma could discern.

 

Marion met them at the gate, backed by a couple of humans with their faces masked and their bodies armored in a patchwork of scavenged gear.

 

“Colonel Tarr,” he said, lowering his own blaster as he approached the pilot.

 

“In the flesh,” Tarr replied. “I assume you are Commander Marion?”

 

“You assume correctly.” Marion was a short man, pale, handsome in an unremarkable kind of way. He was at least forty, possibly fifty. “And these are my sons.” He gestured at the armed men behind him.

 

“Charmed.” Tarr smiled. “Shall we--”

 

“Where are the others?” The question fell flat out of Marion's mouth. His grey eyes were scanning the jungle behind Phasma. “Who is this?”

 

“This is a Stormtrooper,” Tarr said, pointing his thumb back at Phasma. “We don't name them.”

 

“I know what a Stormtrooper is,” said Marion. For a moment, Phasma forgot that she had swapped her custom armor out for a suit of regular white plastisteel plates. For a moment, her pace quickened and she rebalanced herself on her speeder, made sure she remembered where her weapons were.

 

“Where are the others?” he said again to Tarr.

 

“We brought only ourselves,” Tarr replied. “As I said, we're trying to do this quickly and discreetly--”

 

“Get off your speeders,” Marion said, gesturing to them with the tip of his blaster.

 

For a moment, Tarr hesitated. He glanced back at Phasma; he shrugged, and he dismounted his landspeeder. Phasma did the same; the ground here was soft, spongy with moisture and decay.

 

“Gabriel,” Marion said. “Get these men's weapons and--”

 

“Now, hold on a second,” Tarr said, stepping back with his hands in front of him. “We have neither threatened you nor--”

 

“You come to _my_ planet and _my_ compound in the name of the First Order,” said Marion, “and the first thing you do is try and disarm me of the weapons I use to protect my people--”

 

“I have no intention of disarming you,” Tarr said. He had his blaster out now, was carefully getting back on his speeder as Marion's sons advanced on him. “Now, if the two of you can simply walk away--”

 

“I never gave you permission to get back on that speeder!” Marion barked.

 

“You don't _give_ me permission, Commander,” said Tarr, but his eyes and his blaster were on the young man walking toward him. “Back away, boy--”

 

But Marion's son reached for his belt, and Tarr fired two blaster bolts directly into his chest.

 

The other one screamed and dove down onto the body. Marion stood frozen, gripping his rifle, staring at the bleeding wreck in front of him.

 

Tarr was already on his commlink. He was calling in an airstrike. He was fleeing. Phasma followed.

 

“Colonel, what the hell are you doing?” Phasma yelled, accelerating hard to catch up with the idiot fighter pilot ahead of her.

 

“I'm getting my damned AT-AT, Phasma!” he yelled back. “Preferably, _before_ this two-faced lunatic starts using it to attack us!”


End file.
